Northern Europe on the POLARIS-Part 1
Thanks for the trip report and the great pictures to our skipper Wolf Knipfer:
Originally I was supposed to skipper the boat in the Caribbean, which I was really looking forward to: Cuba, Jamaica etc., and then from New York back to Europe. Unfortunately, the boat was rammed by a fisherman in the Irish Sea last autumn with nobody on the bridge. So the trip to America was cancelled for the time being.
On 9 April, we set off for Europe instead: the boat arrived from the shipyard in Bremerhaven and, together with the owner and a few colleagues, we took it on a test trip across the North Sea and the Ijsselmeer to Amsterdam. There I took over the boat and the journey continued with guests. I can get over the first part relatively quickly, as I have already written about the Amsterdam – Zeebrugge – Boulogne-sur-Mer – Dieppe route many times.
From Dieppe, we crossed the Channel to England. I hadn’t been sailing there since Brexit and was curious to see how the entry formalities would work – I had heard horror stories beforehand. But it turned out to be super simple: fill in the form on the internet with the ship and crew details, upload it – and that was it! No customs or passport control in the harbour, nothing. I was happy.
The first harbour on English soil was Brighton. From there we travelled to Shoreham and then to the most popular sailing area in England: the Solent with Cowes as the “sailing capital”. In addition to the incredible traffic with everything from sailing boats and fast ferries to container freighters, the quaint pubs in Cowes are the most memorable, but unfortunately there are no photos of them.
The next stop was the big city of Southhampton and from there to Portsmouth for the crew change. Here we were moored in a small marina in the centre of the city, right at the foot of the “Spinnaker Tower”, Portsmouth’s landmark.
There is a very nice naval museum in Portsmouth, highly recommended. The flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson lies there – reasonably well preserved. Unfortunately, everything above is currently being dismantled and scaffolded as part of a multi-year restoration programme.
We spent the next few days in the Solent – and still only saw a fraction of what you can do there.
At the exit of the Solent, you pass this world-famous (at least among sailors) rock formation called ‘The Needles’.
We spent the next night in a beautiful little anchorage bay. We wanted to use the inflatable boat that is attached to our davits at the stern.
Ideal for exploring this magnificent anchorage called Worbarrow Bay.
We continued along the south coast of England in pretty good weather. Here’s a quick look at my workplace – as a skipper, you can’t complain about that.
After weathering a super heavy thunderstorm with well over 40 knots of wind off Falmouth, we travelled via Penzance past Lands End to the Isles of Scilly. But before that we came to a place where I was finally able to take a photo that I had been meaning to take for years: Wolf Knipfer in front of the famous lighthouse called Wolf Rock!
I’ve never been to the Isles of Scilly – for one very simple reason: there are no marinas and no harbours to moor in. So you can’t get ashore without a dinghy with an outboard motor. And getting the stowed dinghy out and inflating it on the other boats I’ve travelled on has always been too much of a hassle for me.
Nevertheless, even cruisers come towards you in narrow places – but the pilot boat goes ahead and shoos them all aside.
Normally you go to a buoy there (e.g. off Hugh Town on St Mary’s), take the dinghy and go to the pub.
On the Isles of Scilly, I finally had the opportunity to go dry on a boat. You can do that with the POLARIS because it has a centreboard that can be retracted. You can’t do that with a ‘normal’ keelboat like the ones I usually sail.
You dig in with bow and stern anchors at about half tide and wait until the water is gone. Here, for example, you can see very clearly what an anchor properly driven into the bottom should look like:
We spent two tides like this because the first high tide was in the middle of the night and I didn’t want to go any further at night.
The boat lies very nicely on the centre section with the centreboard retracted. However, you have to put up with about 15 degrees of lean, but you have that when sailing too.
It looks really impressive when you’re standing down there.
But eventually we had to move on, we still wanted to go to Wales and on to Dublin in Ireland.
So we left the Isles of Scilly and continued north past impressive rock formations. You have to navigate well here, especially as there are considerable tidal currents.
The next planned harbour was Milford Haven in Wales. At first we thought we would be greeted there with full honours – even the fireboat had sailed out to spray a salute!
Unfortunately, this didn’t apply to us, and when I registered first with one and then with the other, neither of them had even one place free for us. We anchored in a beautiful bay to the west of Milford Haven and took the dinghy ashore. There, to our great astonishment, we found one of the best restaurants I’ve ever had in the UK in a tiny village. Young people with young, creative cuisine – simply fantastic!
As there are hardly any harbours further north on the English side that you can get into with a ship like the POLARIS, we then sailed over to the Irish side, initially to Arklow. As we had little wind and good weather, we were able to experience a few more great sailing moments:
After a total of seven weeks on this beautiful boat, my trip ended in Dublin, where the owner took over the boat for the next leg. This went – also with other crews – up the Irish coast and over to Scotland, where I then flew back to take the boat through the Caledonian Canal and the northern North Sea over to Norway.
But that will come in the next story.
